Abstract
This symposium deals with new coordination practices that have emerged among European public sectors to cope with complex societal challenges. Governments struggle to deal with multifaceted policy problems that defy simple solutions and straddle the borders of organizations and ministerial areas of responsibility as well as administrative levels. Thus, public-sector coordination has become a key asset in governments’ policy capacity (Governments for the Future, 2013; Painter and Pierre, 2005). Traditional coordination by hierarchy has been supplemented by New Public Management (NPM) solutions relying on market and competition as well as by post-NPM initiatives attempting to (re-)integrate fragmented administrative apparatuses. Transboundary coordination arrangements such as networks, partnerships and shared performance targets have been introduced and a variety of new coordination practices have emerged across Europe to tackle contemporary policy challenges (Lægreid et al., 2014). These coordination practices vary in shape and form and go under different labels, such as whole-of-government, joined-up government, holistic governance, new public governance, networks, partnerships, connected government and collaborative public management.
This symposium is being published as part of the research project ‘Coordination for Cohesion in the Public Sector of the Future’ (COCOPS), funded by the EU Seventh Framework Programme. The aim of COCOPS Work Package 5 ‘The Governance of Social Cohesion: Innovative Coordination Practices in Public Management’ was to identify and examine recent coordination practices and related steering instruments in public management in order to analyse the functioning of such practices and assess their value in countering public sector fragmentation and delivering public value. This symposium takes an in-depth look at three cases identified by the COCOPS project that focus on coordination within central government administration and evaluate attempts to solve problems that straddle the borders of ministerial areas of responsibility. Central governments are particularly relevant in this context because they are under increasing pressure to handle complex ‘wicked’ transboundary issues where there is mismatch between the problem structure and the organization structure.
The case studies describe and analyse novel coordination practices, explain their constraining and enabling factors, identify their perceived effects and draw lessons for public sector coordination in general – with special focus on arrangements aimed at enhancing central coordination capacity. They address the ability of central governments to align various actors around transboundary goals, examine related enabling factors and obstacles and assess how the emerging instruments work in practice. By including case studies from three European countries – Estonia, Norway and the UK – this symposium highlights coordination challenges in different politico-administrative contexts and the interesting variations between cases. The three articles address specific cross-boundary ‘wicked’ policy areas such as internal security and shared targets as well as cross-boundary administrative tools that have a tamer or more seamless service delivery character, such as establishing development systems for senior civil servants.
Nakamura and James’ article focuses on shared performance targets as a tool with which the central political leadership promotes horizontal coordination in the UK. Despite the considerable attention paid to coordination and joined-up initiatives, shared performance targets are under-researched. The authors specified a theory for how a shared performance target system can be expected to improve horizontal coordination and assess those expectations against the practice of public service agreements in the UK. They found that public service agreements enabled a step change increase in the discussion of shared policy objectives across departments. However, despite the benefits, fundamentally separate ministerial and departmental accountability structures led to vague outcome targets, underdeveloped performance reporting and fragmented delivery arrangements.
Christensen, Lægreid and Rykkja address the ‘wicked problem’ of organizing for internal security. The article examines the central emergency and crisis management response to the terrorist attacks in Norway in July 2011 – with special focus on the coordinating role of the Ministry of Justice. Those attacks revealed significant coordination problems in national crisis management, exposed a fragmented policy area and revealed severe accountability issues. The authors used a structural-instrumental and a cultural-institutional perspective to understand outcomes, and they found that there is consensus about what the problems are but not about how to resolve them. For that reason, the organizational changes introduced in the wake of the July 2011 attacks have been cautious and incremental while most of the coordination problems persist.
Randma-Liiv, Uudelepp and Sarapuu explore the opportunities for and obstacles to the establishment of a central coordination instrument in a fragmented central government. In particular, they examine the creation of a development system for Estonian senior civil servants and analyse shifts in the coordination mechanisms that took place under this initiative over one decade. The authors conclude that networks offer an alternative to hierarchy in promoting the creation of new coordination practices in fragmented administrative systems. However, once the coordination instrument has matured, networks may prove insufficient and require further institutionalization and formalization through the inclusion of hierarchical elements. Moreover, funding arrangements may trigger a shift in basic coordination mechanisms.
The case studies provide new insights into the possibilities and difficulties arising from coordination arrangements by analysing not only the processes and outcomes of change but also how the new arrangements work in practice. Although the selected cases represent different administrative traditions (namely, the Anglo-Saxon, the Nordic and the post-communist Central and Eastern European), some important generalizations can be made and various lessons drawn.
First, the articles highlight the need for a balance between the priorities of the central government and the individual ministries – a key challenge in building coordination capacity. They explore issues that transcend the ‘ministerial silos’ that dominate most central governments in Europe. Overall, the principle of ministerial responsibility and specialization by purpose or task constrains horizontal coordination and organizations’ set up to tackle transboundary problems and tasks. The new approaches address ‘wicked problems’ and try to counter the fragmentation brought about by NPM reforms. They aim to counter the ‘pillarization’ or ‘departmentalization’ of the public sector, to integrate various parts of that sector and to foster understanding and joint problem-solving across organizational boundaries. This often leads to the strengthening of central authority – that is, control over some departments and their functioning increases and the government apparatus as a whole is more steered from the centre. Thus, new coordination practices tend to increase the capacity of central administrative actors to act. Competence and expertise are utilized and additional room for steering and decision-making is created through new combinations of knowledge and technical and physical resources. This is particularly important when governments face crises, as seen in the evolution of structures for coordinating internal security in Norway since July 2011.
The new coordination arrangements lead not only to new solutions but also to new problems. In administrative systems with strong line ministries, departmentalization and silo arrangements, coordination is often limited to ‘negative coordination’, implying non-interference to minimalize conflicts between administrative domains. To progress from negative towards positive coordination by building integrated and coherent programmes, structural arrangements and service deliveries is therefore a major challenge (Bouckaert et al., 2010). The coordination arrangements are neither neutral nor simply technical by nature. Rather, their design and implementation are often biased towards certain values, interests and norms. Thus, changing coordination practices tend to be complex trade-offs and alter power relations among the actors involved. This, in turn, may lead to conflicts, tensions and unintended consequences, as the articles in this symposium demonstrate.
Furthermore, the new ways of working together pose new challenges with regard to accountability and consequently the legitimacy of decision-making and institutions. As joined-up government and new coordination arrangements normally imply diffused or shared accountability relations between the various actors, accountability relationships become increasingly complex and hybrid. For example, the UK case study shows that accountability structures in which departments play a major role inhibited the setting of cross-cutting targets and the development of practical joint delivery. Complex problems require complex solutions but by their very nature entail ambiguities and contradictions.
Second, so far there has been only a handful of studies focused on the feasibility of various types of coordination mechanism in particular contexts (Bouckaert et al., 2010). In order to be operational, coordination mechanisms must reflect environmental characteristics such as the type of administrative structure and the distribution of decision-making powers within that structure. The articles in this symposium show that context is vital to understanding why and how different practices evolve, how they are perceived and how they develop. They demonstrate that a decentralized institutional environment poses challenges for initiatives oriented towards standardization and increasing central control. An important lesson is that there is no single solution to handle the challenges of transboundary coordination. Nor is there a ‘correct formula’ that can harmonize competing interests, overcome uncertainty and ambiguous government structures and make policy choices that will be accepted by one and all.
Although the classical approach (see Bouckaert et al., 2010) distinguishes between three major coordination mechanisms – hierarchy, market and network – reality is much more complex and involves various hybrid mechanisms rather than clear-cut choices. Hierarchy appears to remain a strong coordination mechanism alongside cross-cutting partnerships. The articles in this symposium underscore that central control through hierarchy is another core component of post-NPM reforms. At the same time, ‘wicked problems’ cannot be solved unless there is horizontal inter-organizational cooperation. The Norwegian case study shows that especially in unpredictable and complex situations, vertical and hierarchical coordination has to be supplemented by horizontal coordination through networks. The Estonian case study indicates that networks offer a realistic alternative to hierarchy in creating new coordination practices in fragmented administrative systems where centralization may prove politically or administratively difficult.
It is very unlikely that network coordination alone can overcome policy silos and the interests of powerful stakeholders. Networks tend to lack the human, financial and technical resources necessary for successful coordination. The importance of funding arrangements for achieving horizontal coordination is demonstrated by the case studies of the development system for an Estonian senior civil service and the capacity of the UK core executive. Consequently, a combination of hierarchical and network mechanisms is often the feasible solution for coordination: the various coordination mechanisms seem to supplement rather than replace one another. Thus, it appears that both robustness and flexibility are important factors in this context.
Third, the three studies included in this symposium all demonstrate that new coordination arrangements cannot be considered to offer an instant panacea or even a quick fix. Although new coordination practices are often based on simple ideas, they seldom result in simple arrangements. Changing organizational culture is more difficult than changing the structures themselves. Moreover, overcoming departmental conflicts and self-serving interests and creating new and shared cultural identities is time-consuming. Professional socialization and the development of shared values or building new skills and competences are long-term undertakings. The UK’s shared target system is a good illustration of the importance of the control structure in changing behaviour. Building new coordination practices requires patience. Participants need to adapt and leaders must show consistency in steering. On the one hand, administrative systems must try to make new coordination instruments work. On the other hand, they should remain open to learning from experience and be willing to adjust existing coordination arrangements as they evolve in a changing environment.
We can conclude that contemporary systems are characterized by interdependencies and diversity and that this puts strong pressure on multi-dimensional coordination frameworks. Finding a workable balance between hierarchical instruments and network solutions is complicated and context-dependent. However, it may still be the best way forwards in the face of complex and transboundary coordination challenges.